Chapter 12 Stormy #2
I stop and tread water, looking over my shoulder.
The open Gulf is behind me, going on forever.
When I turn back toward the shore, the bar is smaller than it was a minute ago.
I can still see it, but it's shrinking. I'm being pulled straight out, directly away from the shore, and no matter how hard I swim, I can't break free.
I take a deep breath and swim toward the bar as hard as I can again. I keep the building straight in front of me because it's the only thing I know, the only landmark, the only fixed point in a world that's becoming water in every direction.
There's no one else in the water with me. Or on the beach that I can see. No lifeguards. No tourists.
I swim and I kick as hard as I can. The bar gets smaller and the water gets deeper. My arms are burning, and my legs are starting to cramp. I'm swallowing saltwater every third breath.
Time passes. I don't know how much.
Everything blurs together. The swimming, the gasping, the salt in my throat and the burning in my muscles. The bar is really small now. I can still make out the shape of the building but that's it. The shore is a line, just a flat line of sand and structures.
I'm out in the Gulf of Mexico alone, and nobody knows I'm here.
I yell and scream for help with everything I've got, and the sound comes out weak. No one can hear me. There's nobody on the beach. Nobody in the water. Nobody on the road. Sheila thinks I'm walking. Tex is in a meeting. Nobody is looking for me because nobody knows I need help.
I go under.
It's not dramatic. It's not like the movies where you thrash and fight.
I just run out of strength. My arms stop pulling and my legs stop kicking.
A swell of water closes over my head and I sink, just a few feet, into the quiet dark.
It's almost peaceful. That's the terrifying part.
How peaceful it is when your body gives up. And it's warm.
The water is so warm.
I claw back to the surface. Gasp. Try to think.
Try to be smart. I stop swimming and roll onto my back and float.
Just float. Let the water hold me. My chest heaves and I stare up at the sky, blue and empty and enormous, and for a few seconds it works.
The panic drops a notch. My legs stop cramping. I can breathe.
A wave rolls over my face. Not a big one, just a swell, but I'm flat on my back and it fills my mouth and nose with saltwater.
I choke and roll sideways and I'm under again, thrashing, coughing, fighting back to the surface.
I get my head up and try to float again but another swell comes.
I can't time it, can't anticipate it, and every time I get my breathing steady the water comes over me and resets the panic to full.
The wind is picking up now and the swells are getting bigger.
I try three more times. Each time I float a little less, choke a little more, come up a little weaker.
The swells aren't big yet but they're choppy and unpredictable.
They just have to keep coming enough to drown me, and they try, patient and relentless, breaking over my face every time I find a rhythm.
I'm going to die out here.
The thought arrives calmly. Factually. I'm going to die in the water in a hot pink bathing suit. Nobody is going to know what happened until my body washes up somewhere down the coast.
The panic quiets and changes into grief.
I think about Tex. How could I think about anything else?
He's everything.
I think about him standing at the grill with smoke in his beard and his eyes crinkling when he smiles.
I think about his voice in the dark during the hurricane, steady and warm, the rope I held onto when everything else was falling apart.
I think about his hand stopping one inch from mine on the counter, when he instinctively reached to comfort me and I didn't let him.
What the fuck is wrong with me? Why didn't I let him squeeze my hand? I know he won't hurt me. I know that. Would it have killed me to let him touch my fingers?
I've fucked up everything and now it's too late.
I think about his arm under my fingers on the balcony, warm and solid, and how I touched him and the world didn't end.
I can't stop thinking about all the things I didn't do.
I didn't tell him my name. I didn't tell him where I came from or what happened to me or why I flinch at hands.
I didn't trust him with the truth even though he earned it a million times over.
I kept the chair against the door every night to protect myself against him.
Tex. The safest person in the world. Even long after I knew in my heart it was stupid and would hurt him if he knew.
Because he was never pushing through my door.
Never.
I was scared. I kept my history locked in a box that I was going to open someday when I was ready. And now that someday is never because I'm drowning in the fucking Gulf of Mexico that he loves so much, and he doesn't even know I'm out here.
Why didn't I let him hug me? I wanted him too.
So much. He hugs everyone. He touches everyone except me.
Sheila, Mickey, random bikers, neighbors, people he knows at Walmart.
The list never ends. I watched him lift Sheila off the ground.
I wondered what it would feel like and I could have found out. He would have done it.
I know that now, out here with the water dragging me out and the truth stripped bare.
He would have wrapped those big arms around me and held me.
I would have felt so safe. He was waiting for me to ask.
I never did because I was scared, and scared is the only language I've ever spoken. Now I'm out of time to learn a new one.
I could've trusted him. I know that. Deep down, I know I could've trusted him with everything.
He was the first person I ever should have.
My name, my story, all of it. He would have held that close too.
He would have held all of it the way he held the photo of his dad, careful, like it mattered more than anything.
I almost had a good life.
It was right there in the palm of my hand, in a wrecked bar on a beach with a man who gave me a new name and a job. Tex never asked for anything. Not one damn thing. I was too scared to close my fingers around the life I had and now it's gone.
And that kills me.
A wave rolls over me. I come up coughing. Weaker now. My arms feel like they belong to someone else. My legs are so heavy. They're not working anymore. I always heard you could tread water for days. That is absolute bullshit and a total lie. I won't make it another hour out here.
God, I hope Tex doesn't have to see my body when they find me. They'll probably make him identify me because there's no one else. And he doesn't even know my real name.
The thought makes me fight to hang on a little longer.
Not for myself. For him. Because he already lost his parents.
He already lost his bar twice now and he's been putting everything back together piece by piece.
If he loses me too, it might break that big, generous heart to the point it can't be fixed.
I kick. I fight. I get my face above the water one more time, and I gasp. The sky is impossibly blue and the seagulls are screaming without a care in the world. The shore is so far away, but I scream his name with everything I have left one last time.
"Tex!"
The water takes it. The distance swallows it.
Nobody hears me.
I'm invisible the same way I've always been.
I go under. The water is warm and green and the light filters down through it in columns of gold.
Tex was right.
The water in the Gulf really is sparkling clear and beautiful.
It's the last thing I see.